Not just magnitude but also the direction!

In association with

Salute girl power! …pg 2

‘Samvad 2014 – Confluence of Industry and Academics’ – An innovative initiative by MMS …pg 3

India at the Asian Games …pg 4

Reader Engagement Initiative

Volume 11

Issue 03

October 2014Circulated free to students of Vidyalankar (For private circulation only)

Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), called Mangalyaan (literally meaning the Mars craft), is India’s first interplan-etary mission launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

It was set aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehi-cle (PSLV) on 5 November 2013. MOM took 300 days to finish the 200 million km expedition to Mars, which includes the 20-25 days it spent in the Earth’s orbit, building up the essential speed to break free from the gravitational pull. India became the first Asian nation to success-fully reach Mars after the Soviet Space Pro-gram, NASA, and the European Space Agency.

This mission was undertaken to place Man-galyaan in the Mars orbit for exploration of Mars surface features, morphology, mineralogy and the planet’s atmosphere by indigenous sci-entific instruments. It is a "technology demon-strator" project to develop the technologies for design, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission. To achieve its secondary, scientific objective, it carries five instruments (payloads) that will help advance knowledge about Mars. These payloads consist of a camera, two spectrometers, a radiometer and a photometer. Together, they have a weight of about 15 kg. The mission, from the declara-tion to the implementation, took ISRO two years and a month, in comparison to NASA’s MAVEN, which was declared in September 2008, and yet entered the Mars orbit just earlier the same week, thus taking six years.

According to NASA, out of the 51 missions to the red planet by different countries, only 21 were successful till now. While nearing the Martian orbit, the velocity of the Orbiter has to be abridged accurately for it to be captured by the orbit. Around 65 per cent of Mars Mis-sions have failed at this juncture. If the velocity

is not adjusted precisely, then either the Orbiter will collide into Mars or will be lost in space. India became the only nation to ever nail its Martian mission on its very first attempt.

India’s Mars mission had its share of criti-cism by people, who had said, the country could not afford to indulge in such a mission when a third of the population have no access to elec-tricity. But what was thus disregarded is that investment in science and technology builds competence and aptitude and helps develop the people who further profit the financial system and the society.

Nevertheless, MOM along with various other titles, has also clinched one for being the cheap-

est interplanetary mission at a record cost of Rs.450 crore or nearly $67 million dollars. NA-SA’s Maven space mission which has already positioned itself into its Martian orbit, cost $671 million. The cost of Rs 7 was incurred per km, lesser than what an auto driver charges per km in Mumbai, to cover the 650 million km dis-tance to Mars by the unmanned spacecraft. Also, the mission was persistently compared to the budget of a lot of Hollywood movies. Our PM Narendra Modi remarked, “The Hollywood movie ‘Gravity’ cost more than our Mars mis-sion - this is a great achievement.”

The mission has been such an immense suc-cess that MOM has its own newly minted twit-

ter handle. The people behind this Twitter han-dle seem to have a good sense of humor. MOM responded with a “Howdy @MarsCuriosity? Keep in touch. I’ll be around”, when the Curios-ity rover tweeted a “Namaste” to MOM. The latest member among the team of Mars explor-ers isn’t just economical, it’s suave too.

ISRO has achieved many laurels in the past and has conducted a variety of operations for both Indian and foreign clients. ISRO plans to send a follow-up mission with a greater scien-tific payload to Mars in the 2017–2020 time-frame; it would include an orbiter and a station-ary lander.

The success of our space mission is a lustrous symbol of what we are capable of as a nation. VITians too celebrated this historic occasion with fervour and lauded this achievement with a display of posters, paintings and victory mes-sages. Presentations and videos on the Mission were projected in the campus amphitheatre throughout the day. This is a momentous occa-sion that’s put us right up there in the select club of interplanetary exploring nations. Kudos to the ISRO team for creating history!

- Madhumita SawantTE EXTC 1, VIT

References:http://www.isro.org/mars/home.aspx

24 September, 2014 - India has successfully put Mangalyaan In the MarS orbIt!

The MMS Department Of Vidyalankar Institute Of Technology set the best example of ‘Action based learning’ on this Gandhi Jayanti. Young India aimed to anchor its pedagogy in stimulating

an inclination towards practicing the Gandhi-an principles by the youth on the work front. Following the Father of the Nation’s footprints, Vidyalankar MMS students proudly announced “Young India”, a 2-day event on 1 and 2 October. On 2 October students marched on the streets to campaign for Gandhiji’s Autobiography – “My Experiments with Truth” where the theo-ries described by Mahatma Gandhi 80 years back are still apt till date.

Vidyalankar decided to name this learning event as “Young India” because Young India was the first newspaper’s name started by Gan-dhiji under the freedom struggle movement.

The two-day event began with a bang on 1 Oc-tober. The inaugural event was filled with heart-warming speeches, solo acts and inspir-

ing real-life stories. We were honored to have with us Dr. Prasad and Mr. Dhume (Faculty of NITIE), Dr. Ankush Sharma (Head – Manage-ment Studies), Mr. A. A. Sarma (MD & CEO, SIDBI Venture capital Ltd.) and last but not the least Mr. Laxman Gole. Mr. Gole, who had a dark and gloomy past, came across the book of Gandhiji, “My Experiments With Truth”. This book changed his life forever. Hearing his story was not only inspiring but also astounding. Students made inspiring speeches on Gan-dhism. The day ended with the grand launch of the event “Young India” which was inaugu-rated by Mr. A. A. Sarma wherein students were given 10 books each, in 4 languages, sum-ming up to 1200 books in total.

On 2 October, students ventured out on the streets of Mumbai, clad with Gandhi topis. Their aim was to campaign Gandhi’s autobiography to

our Mumbaikars. Convincing, persuading, and educating people about this book, the students sold altogether the entire lot of 1200 books in one single day. Some students were fortunate enough to set up their stalls at the office of Godrej Ltd., Vikhroli. And some even luckier, had a chance to campaign this book at BJP’s office, making Mr. Amit Shah himself buy this book.

This event not only taught students Gandhi-ji’s principles, but also gave them many essen-tial lessons on management. They learnt many streams of Management- Marketing, Finance, HR, Operations, in one single day in this stir-ring event! Students strived hard to keep up to the words of Gandhiji, “Without action, you aren’t going anywhere!”

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”

MMS students campaigning across Mumbai

Not just magnitude but also the direction!

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“Safety is not a gadget but a state of mind.” —Eleanor Everet 2October 2014

Gender discrimination was once upon a time a burning problem. But with the advent of education, science and technology and modernisation, soci-ety is changing its attitude towards

this worn-out ideology of gender discrimina-tion. As a result, we are steadily heading to-wards a society, which believes in gender equality. Mahatma Jyotiba Phule deserves a salute for his commendable job on girls’ edu-cation. Along with women, a large section of men of the society have also contributed a great deal to achieve this.

In spite of the progress of the times, a frac-tion of male society, still considers women as the weaker sex and as objects of exploitation. As it is evident through mass-media, quite a number of women are being molested and exploited by men. It is ironical that it is some men who are the perpetrators, but the victims are made to live a shameful life.

This threat to girls and women is on rise. Therefore it is of utmost importance, to train girls and women for their self-defence. To-day’s girls are venturing like boys but this threat gives a set-back to their venture. In order to bring about a threat free society for women and girls, many institutes have start-ed self-defence training programmes. Vidy-alankar, along with the overall development of students, has taken an initiative in train-ing our girl students for their self-defence and thus is empowering them.

The Institute had arranged a workshop for VSIT girl students by Mr. Subramaniam, who is a third degree Black belt from Goju-Riju Karate-Do Renmie India. This workshop aimed at teaching self-defence techniques in different situations. This will help our girl stu-dents to be more confident while travelling, at their work places and in public places. It will also enable them to help other women in need. This commendable initiative will also influ-ence other institutes to start such practice.

- Snehprabha KattiFaculty, VSIT

A girl must be two things-classy and fabulous - Coco Chanel. Since ancient times it has often being quoted that ‘a girl’s character is her greatest prized possession’. A big question for today’s India which has enjoyed freedom for the last 66 years is how safe and secure are our women? Girls who are out to explore the world and enter public life are faced with

several challenges due to both external as well as internal factors such as atti-tudes, beliefs, awareness and thinking. Some ways for a girl to keep herself safe are to be cautious and alert because she might be sometimes unaware of who’s watching her.

A girl should always be positive and have a ‘never say die’ attitude and must have faith in herself and her abilities. Girls have the ability to multitask: interact with others, nurture their relationships with family and friends and the forti-tude to face challenges and overcome problems. They can balance their emotions and logical thinking skills for success in life and career.

As Catherine Deneuve rightly says, “A woman has to be intelligent, have charm, a sense of humor and be kind. It’s the same quality I require in a man.”

- Lymraina Fernandes EJIG-A, VP

Nirbhaya Campaign: Workshop on self-defence

VSIT student participates in Summer School CampV

SITians are always in the forefront for ex-ploring new avenues. The University of Mumbai had organ-

ized a ‘Summer School Camp 2014’ to ignite student minds for innovation and discover-ing solutions for the unmet needs of our country. Two re-search papers from each col-lege affiliated to the Universi-ty of Mumbai were called for. VSIT forwarded the abstracts of two research papers and the one on Automated Levelling Trains by Gayanka Ganesh Sawardekar was selected and she was eligible to attend the summer school which was conducted in the University’s Kalina campus. Selected students from all regions of Maharashtra participated in this.

The Summer Camp was scheduled for three weeks. In the first week, eminent resource persons which included the likes of Prof. M. M. Sharma (Innovations in different fields of science), Prof. Anil Gupta (Inventions by Innova-tion Foundation), Dr. Suvarna Kulkarni aand (Serendipi-tous discoveries that changed the world) provided expert guidance to the participants. In the second week visits were organized to many reputed institutes such as the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences and the Depart-ment of Nanoscience & Nanotechnology on the Kalina Campus, Indian Institute of Science Education and Re-search, Pune and the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune.

The third week was reserved for presentations by par-ticipants and interactive brainstorming sessions. Gay-anka also got an opportunity to make a presentation on her topic related to railway accidents due to the gap be-tween platforms and footboards. On the last day, certifi-cates were distributed and 13 students were selected for funding of their research topics by the University and it was announced that Gayanka’s project would also be pro-vided funds. Gayanka has been guided throughout by Prof. Kiran Datar. It was a great journey, addition of new intel-lectual friends and an enriching learning experience.

Salute girl power!

Not just magnitude but also the direction!

In association with

“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. ”

—George Smith Patton 3October 2014

Kaleidoscope, said to be one of the most prestigious college festivals in Mum-bai, is organized by Sophia College for Women. This year Kaleidoscope (or K’Scope) was organized between Sep-

tember 9- 14 with the theme “Be Iconic”. Team VIT had a contingent of around 60

students, who participated in 36 out of 44 events in various categories like Fine Arts, Performing Arts, Literary Arts and Infor-mals. The VITians did a spectacular job by winning several events and helping VIT create a niche for itself at the fest. What made the achievement all the more special was the fact that VIT was the only engineer-ing college which participated in the event.

VIT bagged the following prizes:1. Fine Arts-

l Out of Bounds (Photography event) – 1st Place – Sneha Deshpande.

l Mugshot (Facepainting event) – 1st Place – Oindrilla Chatterjee, Shreyash Suryawanshi, Omakant Sharma.

l Music Maniac (Music based art event) – 1st Place – Amol Koli.

l The Big Picture (Collage event) – 2nd Place – Oindrilla Chatterjee, Aashay Sathe.

2. Performing Arts- Electrocuted (Band event) – 2nd Place – Shubham Anjankar, Shubham Arawkar,

Akshay Nikumbh, Sagar Sarang, Mihir Joshi, NPA- Brian Faleiro.

3. Informals- Chop Till You Drop (Culinary Arts event) – 1st Place – Ilma Nawab.

4. Literary Arts- Fantazia (Fictional story writing event) – 3rd Place – Atessa Shradhey, Jaahaanavee Sikri.

Apart from this, VIT also qualified for the finals of 6 events. It is a matter of great pride and honour that the contingent of VIT was placed 5th among 43 colleges participating in this extravaganza. VIT gained recogni-tion among the top colleges of Mumbai,

namely HR college which ranked 1st with 240 points, followed by Sophias, Jai Hind, KC. VIT finished with 199 points at rank 5.

VIT also won the prestigious Fine Arts Trophy for the most wins in Fine Arts Events Category. The entire experience of participating and winning at such a huge fest is something that each member of the contingent will cherish for a long time. We would really like to thank our principal, Prof. Varsha Bhosle, for all the support she gave us. We look forward to seeing VIT participate in a lot more events and scale new heights in the days to come.

- Brian Faleiro (Contingent Leader) SE ETRX 2, VIT

VIT students’ grand show at

K’SCOPE 2014

‘Samvad 2014 – Confluence of Industry and Academics’ – An innovative initiative by MMSO

n 19 September SAMVAD 2014 – Con-fluence of Industry and Academics was organised for MMS students. Com-munication is pivotal for any organisa-tion and SAMVAD was an innovative

way of communicating SIP projects in the form of charts and models in an exhibition. It was an intra-collegiate competition and was con-ducted on the VIT campus. ‘SAMVAD 2014’ was inaugurated by Chief Guest Mr. K. Suresh Babu, Senior Executive with Reliance ADAG for last 12 years and currently the Chief Treas-ury Officer in Reliance Commercials Ltd. He has 35 years of rich experience in Banking and Financial Services with Public Sector, Private Sector and foreign banks as well. He empha-sised on the importance of skill development in his address. Then he inaugurated the event formally and personally visited a few of the fi-nance projects and appreciated students’ efforts.

Students and faculty members from different departments like BMS, Engineering, BSC IT and MMS etc, had shown their keen interest in understanding the SIP projects which moti-vated the MMS students to boost up their con-fidence level and work hard.

Finally the five winners of the SAMVAD 2014

were announced who were adjudged by the panel members Dr. Ankush Sharma, Mr. Suryanarayanan, Prof. Jay Bhatt, Prof. Smita Mukherjee, Prof. Trupti Naik, Prof. Varsha Ma-heshwari and Prof. Radhika Joshi. VDT Direc-tor, Mr. Milind Tadvalkar came for prize distri-bution ceremony. The winners were declared from each specialisation: Finance-Anurag Shi-

rodkar, Marketing-Ashish Gavhale, Systems-Snehal Khillare and Operations-Suhail Manjardekar.

SAMVAD gave MMS students a great oppor-tunity to explore and share their experiences with the corporate world. It gave them the plat-form to convey their findings and recommenda-tions for their respective companies.

It is said that research is to see what everybody else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought. To help promote research in academics, the R & D committee of Vidyalankar School of Information Technology organised an activity “A step towards Avishkar-the State Level Research Convention”

on 8 September. It was a guidance session on research based projects for Commerce, Management & IT students and faculty, highlighting the importance of research and the role played by Avishkar in this direction.

The resource persons in the session were Prof Dr. Anjali Pat-kar from Mithibai College, Dr. Madhavi Pethe (Principal, Dha-nukar College), Prof. Mandhar Bhave from Ruparel College and Prof. Dr. Manjiri Bhave from Khalsa College and Chief Coordi-nator for Summer School. The opening of the session was marked by a speech by VSIT principal Dr. Rohini Kelkar.

Dr. Patkar enlightened students and faculty on the basic con-cepts of research, clarifying the misconceptions about discov-ery, invention, innovation and research. She gave the audience an elaborate account on the process of research and various steps involved in the process. Dr. Pethe emphasised on the con-siderations to be made while choosing an area and topic for research. Breaking numerous myths on scientific research, she made the audience understand that a research pertaining to commerce or management is also scientific as long as the pro-cess of research is scientific in nature. While interacting with the students, she cleared many apprehensions they had regard-ing the choice of topics for research and project work.

Prof. Bhave educated the students about the process and working of a live research project particularly in the field of information technology. She also elaborated on the concept of “Avishkar- The State Level Research Convention” and its role in promoting research-oriented activities among the students. Further she gave information on the process and dates for Av-ishkar 2014, informing the students about the eligibility criteria and how to apply for it. The session was very informative and generated research awareness.

- Amraja ShivkarFaculty, VSIT

A Step Towards Avishkar-The State Level Research Convention

MMS faculty team

Mr. K. Suresh Babu being felicitated by Mr. Suryanarayanan

The winners with the Vice-principal Prof. Varsha Bhosale

Not just magnitude but also the direction!

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“Games lubricate the body and the mind.” —Benjamin Franklin 4October 2014

The game of Cycle Polo in India found its roots in early 1900s. It was taken up as an alternative to Horse Polo in the off sea-

son. It is a team sport, similar to traditional polo except that bicy-cles are used instead of horses. The game has 4 players on field and 4 substitutes. It is a fast game which requires balance, concentration, coordination and the ability to multitask.

Isha Rakesh Soni, who is cur-rently pursuing her second year Biomedical Engineering in Vidy-alankar Institute of Technology, has been recently selected for the International Team. She started playing Cycle Polo from the time she was in her seventh standard. She was inspired by the Interna-tional Indian team captain Assu-rudin Shah who gave her his valu-able guidance. Isha has received many awards in this game. In ad-dition to numerous state titles, Isha’s national titles include: January ‘12 - Punjab, 2nd positionS e p t e m b e r ’ 1 1 - M a d h y a Pradesh, 3rd positionFebruary’11-Rajasthan, 2nd position

Way to go Isha! Team Vidy-alankar is proud of your achieve-ments and wishes you good luck for pedaling to greater heights!

Cycle Polo Champ at VIT

India at the Asian Games“I

promise to bring back the golden days of Indian sports” asserted our PM Naren-dra Modi. After an incredible perfor-mance by the country’s athletes at the 2014 Asian Games, India managed to

showcase some of its finest sportspersons on the international platform. The games hosted at Incheon, South Korea from 19th September to 4th October 2014 brought a worldwide recog-nition of Indian sportspersons and subsequent-ly won gratified medals. Although India grabbed international attention as a huge con-tingent with immense potential and perfor-mance capabilities, it also came to be recog-nised for the debatable controversies the athletes created.

India secured 11 gold medals, three fewer than what they collected in China four years ago, 10 silver and 36 bronze for a total haul of 57. Four of those gold medals came in athletics (two) and kabaddi (two) while archery, boxing, hockey, shooting, squash, tennis and wrestling accounted for the rest.

The gold medal haul also placed India in the eighth position on the medals table, two rungs below where they had finished in China. At the

end of it all, the 541-strong Indian sporting con-tingent has once again secured the top 10 place out of the same number of nations and regions.

The Indian medal count was lesser than ex-pected but there were other glories to cele-brate. The men’s hockey team coming good after

a long time to strike gold, the legend of M C Mary Kom got grander as she became the first Indian woman boxer to receive gold at this platform mak-ing her India’s Most Valuable Player as told by a recent poll. This year India created quite a stir by winning in new disciplines like compound ar-chery and the 20km walk. After 16 years, the In-dian Men’s Hockey team won a gold medal reserv-ing a berth for itself in the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The Asian Games also witnessed an eye catching controversy when the Indian boxer Sarita Devi refused to accept the bronze medal as a form of protest against the injustice by the boxing referee. An opinion expressed by many is whether it is right to question the authori-ties. There are processes laid out for expressing dissent with a decision, and surely that should have been the course of action taken. One thing that stands out is Devi’s courage and spirit to fight for her rights.

The Games ended with a perhaps a fewer med-als than expected but with a promising group of athletes and a resolute contingent who worked hard for years to make their dreams come true.

- Yash ChawlaSE ETRX 2, VIT

Vidyalankar School of Infor mation Technology in col-laboration with the Entrepreneur-

ship Development Activi-ty Committee had organ-ized a seminar by eminent entrepreneur Dr. Vithal V. Kamat, Executive Chair-man & MD, Kamat Hotels India Ltd. The objective of the seminar was to devel-op a sense of entrepre-n e u r s h i p a m o n g students.

From a modest begin-ning in a small time res-taurant in Mumbai to over 500 restaurants all across the world, it surely has been a long and ardu-ous journey for this food connoisseur. Dr. Kamat regaled the audience with his personal experiences in the field of entre-preneurship. He spoke about the most impor-tant mantras of entrepreneurship. According to him, the five goals of entrepreneurship are money, time, energy, effort. He gave some im-portant points on staying ‘desi’ instead of going for ‘videshi’. He summarized the formula of business with his Six ‘E’s:l E- Entrepreneurshipl E- Empowerment

l E- Economyl E- Educationl E- Energyl E- Entertainment

Students were highly motivated by Dr. Ka-mat’s words of wisdom. The lecture concluded with a Q & A session wherein students as well as faculty members asked him some insightful questions about his personal and professional challenges and achievements.

Dr. Vithal Kamat shares secrets of entrepreneurial success